“Altogether the researchers found that a name’s pronounceability, regardless of length or seeming foreignness, mattered most in determining likability. Ease of pronunciation accounted for about 40 percent of off-the-cuff likability.”
Category: ideas
The Problem With Calling Certain Behaviors ‘Hard-Wired’
“Does ‘hard-wired’ mean that our human nature is impervious to change in the specific behavior under scrutiny? Or does it mean that we are genetically ‘set’ to behave in ways that served us well in the past, and that can only be superseded rarely and with enormous effort?”
What Linsanity Says About Race In America
“If he were still alive, Sigmund Freud might have been a Jeremy Lin fan.” The media frenzy over the Asian-American basketball star “has pointed out some residual glitches in the American psyche, in particular how the nation struggles to accept genuine racial diversity.”
Why Writers Work In Cafes (The Noise Helps Them Think)
“People who like to write in cafes are onto something, it seems: A moderate level of noise – the equivalent of the background buzz of conversation – prompts more creative thought, according to a study.”
How Habits Get Formed (The Ad Industry Knows)
“The malleability of habits isn’t news to Madison Avenue: Effective commercials show how people can be quickly trained to do something new and then keep on doing it. The secret, it turns out, is the quick combination of a memorable cue and a rewarding experience.”
Can Society Get The Benefits Of Religion Without The Faith?
Alain de Botton: “How did religion once enhance the spirit of community? More practically, can secular society ever recover that spirit without returning to the theological principles that were entwined with it? I, for one, believe that it is possible to reclaim our sense of community – and that we can do so, moreover, without having to build upon a religious foundation.”
David Brooks: We’ve Become A Talent Society
“It’s more accurate to say that we have gone from a society that protected people from their frailties to a society that allows people to maximize their talents.”
When Academic Economists Think About Beer
“Do people drink more during difficult economic times? What effect does social milieu have on personal preference? Can television change the course of an entire industry? … [A number of] scholars have come together to create a new field, ‘beeronomics,’ devoted to analyzing the economics of beer and brewing.”
Do We Need “Reputation Insurance” On The Internet?
“We need a mandatory insurance scheme for online disasters. For what is an accidental disclosure of information if not an online disaster–a ferocious man-made information tsunami that can destroy one’s reputation the way a real tsunami can destroy one’s home?”
The Science Of Willpower
“Willpower–the popular idea is that it’s something that you use to resist temptation and to make yourself work. But they’ve also found that this same energy is used in making decisions, simply deciding what to have for lunch, what to do at a meeting; all these things deplete the same resource. After a while, when you’ve depleted this resource, it’s a state called ego depletion.”